The Allegheny Conference on Community Development works to improve the economic competitiveness of the region and the entire state, and together we've made real progress over the past few years in simplifying government and reducing uncompetitive business taxes.

The current transit crisis, however, has put our community in a challenging position. The Allegheny Conference, in facing that challenge, is supporting a comprehensive restructuring package to bring the Port Authority's costs under control and to put the agency on a sustainable financial footing.

A healthy transit system is essential to the vitality and competitiveness of the Pittsburgh region. Employers throughout our region depend on transit to bring their employees to work, customers to their stores and students to their schools. But the operational and fiscal issues facing the Port Authority threaten its survival.

Over the past year, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato has pushed the Port Authority to fix itself. Management compensation and benefits have been cut, inefficient bus routes have been eliminated and fares will rise in January.

The Port Authority is also beginning a public redesign of its system so it can do the best job possible moving people using its available resources. But those reforms are not enough.

The Pennsylvania Transportation Funding and Reform Commission found that the Port Authority's bus and rail operators have the highest wage rates in the country when adjusted for regional differences in the cost of living and extraordinarily expensive health-care benefits.

A recent study by the Pennsylvania Economy League of Southwestern Pennsylvania found that the Port Authority labor contracts contained the highest wages and most generous benefits of any of the transit systems and public-sector unions examined.

For example, the Port Authority will pay $29.2 million for retiree health-care benefits this year. Yet Philadelphia's transit system (SEPTA), with three times as many employees, will pay just $7.3 million, the Economy League found. And Port Authority employees can begin receiving retirement benefits much earlier than union employees working for Allegheny County or the state of Pennsylvania.

More must be done to bring the Port Authority's costs in line. Measures that must be taken by the Port Authority and its unionized employees include: Accepting the same limits on health-care benefits that were imposed on the agency's management and non-union workers earlier this year; and agreeing to wage restructuring that lowers the agency's operating expenses.

Even with those changes in place, we will still need a reliable way to fund the Port Authority.

Major metropolitan regions, including Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte and Seattle, typically rely on local dedicated taxes to finance public transit to some degree. For example, Cleveland's system is funded by a 1 percent sales tax. Portland's system relies on a payroll tax levied on employers.

The state Legislature gave Allegheny County just two new options for funding transit: A new tax on drinks in restaurants and bars and one on rental cars. These taxes are commonplace elsewhere in the country and they would have less of an impact on the region's overall economic competitiveness than the alternatives proposed in recent years for funding transit. They are the best option we have available.

The only remaining option for funding transit is using the county property tax. The combined municipal, school and county property taxes in Allegheny County are already too high and an increase would further undermine the county's competitiveness.

Understanding these realities, the Allegheny Conference and the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce are supporting Chief Executive Onorato's proposal to create a dedicated source of funding for the Port Authority from new drink and rental car taxes on the condition -- and only on the condition -- that the Port Authority is legally prohibited from receiving any of the money generated until the transit agency and its unions agree to the kind of health-care benefit and wage concessions outlined above. Mr. Onorato's executive order, issued last week, assures that will be the case.

Unless our community can be assured that dedicated funding will be used to provide bus and rail service and not to maintain unaffordable labor contracts, any new taxes will be a waste of money.

Allegheny Conference members will be among the customers across the region who are paying the new drink and rental car taxes. But they recognize that the labor concessions and other reforms that can be gained at this time in exchange for dedicated transit funding outweigh the burden of paying the new taxes.

The time to finish restructuring our transit system is now, with significant cost controls, a redesigned and more efficient system, and dedicated funding. Then, the Port Authority can begin to look to the future and imagine the kinds of services it could provide in the years ahead.